Background Music

Abstract

Abstract The first chapter of the book considers the idea that video game music can often be in the background of players’ perceptions. Through a central case study of music in a match of StarCraft, it approaches background music phenomenologically in several ways: first as a ground in gestalt psychology, then as a mood or atmosphere, as an affordance in James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, and finally in terms of Martin Heidegger’s idea of ‘equipment.’ Of central concern is the problem of the experience of music that goes ‘unheard’ and the friction between third-person psychological approaches to listening and first-person approaches like phenomenology.